My first Japanese
woodblock print reproduction I bought aged 15 in the year 1970. In the
following two decades I read some books about Japanese woodblock prints
and occasionally bought a new print. Where I
looked for prints, fleamarkets or auctions, I always could find prints by
Kunisada, but I couldn’t find any literature about him. When he was
mentioned in literature he was regarded as
rather inferior to the greats of classical ukiyo-e.
With
a few exceptions, such as actor portraits and portraits of beautiful
women, at the beginning of his career, and a series of large-size actor
head-portraits near the end, it was thought that he had produced only
inferior works. It was not until the early 1990’s, with the appearance of
Jan van Doesburg’s overview of the artistic development of Kunisada, Ellis
Tinios’s introduction to his actor woodblock prints and Sebastian Izzard’s
extensive study of his work, that this picture began to change.

In 1999 when I started the project searching the internet for Kunisada
prints the question "What about Kunisada?" wasn´t already answered.
Meanwhile my catalogue includes about 17.000 designs which represent
about 26.500 sheets. Now
Kunisada is
more clearly revealed as one of the “giants” of the Japanese print.
He was the most popular, prolific and financially successful designer of
ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan. In his own time, his
reputation far exceeded that of his contemporaries, Hokusai, Hiroshige and
Kuniyoshi.

The site displays c. 4.500 prints, mostly ordered by series.
The files on the site are from different sources of the
internet and literature and therefore many of them are not of
professional quality.
Due to restricted webspace only thumbnails and small images are available.

For the friends of Kunisada's great contemporaries, Hiroshige and
Kuniysohi, two sites can be recommended:
The "Kuniyoshi
Project", a growing site maintained by William Pearl and John
Roden's site
"The
Woodblock Prints of Ando Hiroshige".
Here you find the sites for two of the notable followers of the great
masters: Chikanobu presented by Garry
Gross and Yoshitoshi
presented by Noel Chiappa and Jason M. Levine.